The Secret to Stopping Fear and Anxiety (That Actually Works)

When you look at fear, when you look at anxiety, they are these sneaky little thieves that steal away so many amazing moments in your life. And what it does is they convince you the worst case scenario is most likely going to happen. Today I'm going to be talking to you about how to stop your fear and your anxieties that are holding you back. Let's talk about it. When you look at fear, when you look at anxiety, they are these sneaky little thieves that steal away so many amazing moments in your life. And what it does is they convince you the worst case scenario is most likely going to happen. If you think about it, if you've ever felt paralyzed by fear or caught in an anxiety spiral, you know exactly how powerful this can feel. But the truth is, fear and anxiety only has the power that we give it. And so if you have a lot of fear that's holding you back, you're giving it the power. If you have a lot of anxiety that's holding you back, you're the one that's giving it all of its power. And so today I'm going to talk about how to take your power back and how to reframe your mind to be something better. And so I want to give you a story from my life, because one of the things that's funny is people ask me questions like, well, how are you past your fears? How have you mastered yourself, your mindset? I'm like, I haven't. I still have all of the same fears. I just kind of have some tools in my tool belt to get myself out of fear or anxiety quicker than I used to. And so this past week, I'll give you a really good example. Okay, this past week was not really a good week in aviation in the United States. So there was three plane crashes that happened in one week. And, you know, it's terrible. One of them was the worst one in the United States since 2009. And that was last week at the moment of me recording this. And this weekend was supposed to be my very first solo flight, which is basically where I drop off my flight instructor. He gets out of the plane and I have to go fly it alone for the very first time. And so I'm seeing on the News and on YouTube and everywhere on the Internet all of these crazy plane crash and things that have happened, these, these terrible stories and these sad stories that happened. And then I'm thinking in my mind, oh, my God, I've got to fly a plane for the very first time this weekend by myself. And even though I'm completely ready for it. And I have way more hours than the average person that does their first solo. I found myself terrified of what could happen. And I was thinking about all of the crashes that happened, and I was thinking, oh, my God, what if it happens to me? And I started, like, thinking and almost accidentally visualizing tragedy happening when I go to fly the plane. And I could feel. This is the important part. I could feel inside of my body. My body was getting nervous and I was getting scared, and it was trying to protect itself. And so then I realized what was going on, because I'm not immune to fear. I just noticed it, and I was able to get myself out of it. So I realized that my fear wasn't coming from actual reality in my life. Now, sure, things happened in the past, but that's not actual reality of what's going to happen in the future. In my fear, my anxiety around all of it was coming from what I was focusing on. Do you get this? It wasn't in my reality of what was going to happen this weekend in the future. It was all in my head. It wasn't. But it felt like it was in reality because I can look and say, well, this happened in this place, and this happened this place, and this happened this place. And I could be terrified of it and say, oh, my God. Well, that's reality. But it's not reality in the future because the future hasn't happened yet. But I was projecting myself unconsciously into the future and. And being afraid of what could happen. And here's the important thing I really want you to understand is that both possibilities in this moment are equally as real in this moment. I want you to understand this. The possibility in the future of me having something go wrong while I'm flying the plane is equally as real as me taking off and having the best flight of my entire life in loving it and thinking it's amazing, and being so excited and proud of myself for doing it. In this moment, both of them are equally as real. Now, do we think one of them is more real than the other one? Yes. Our brain is making up a fear, and we think that that fear is real. So one version, I mess up, something goes wrong, there's a disaster. The other version, I have the time of my life. I'm soaring through the sky. I feel powerful and free. The this is one of my childhood dreams. I want you to understand you did not lose your imagination in your childhood. All too often I talk to adults and they're like, well, I'm Just not as I don't have the imagination that I used to. You know, I remember when I was a kid, I used to have such a great imagination. And then I'm like talking to them and then they're talking about all of these fears that are holding them back and all of these unconscious visualizations that they have that are keeping them from taking action. I'm like, no, no, no, you, you still have that incredible imagination. It's just you're not using it anymore. It's using you. You're still imagining all the time, every single moment, as rich as you used to when you were a child. But most people are just imagining the worst case scenario all of the time. And it's paralyzing them and taking, keeping them from taking the action that they need to, to change your life. And, and so both outcomes, all outcomes exist in your mind. And I want you to understand, like, if it's not about flying a plane like it was for me in this moment, that's just an example. Some of you guys want to get into a relationship and you're thinking about all of your failed relationships and your marriage that ended in divorce and how you were cheated on and all that stuff. And you're projecting it into the future and saying, well, if I did get into another relationship, I could get cheated on again, I could have my heart broken again. And man, that was really painful. I don't want to do that again. And you're projecting into that future, but that future in this moment, in this present moment, in this very second where you're listening to my voice is equally as real as you getting into another relationship, finding the love of your life, getting married and sailing off into the sunset happy. Both of them are equally as real. But you feel like one of them is more likely to happen because you're projecting your past into your future. Another example, let's say you want to start a business, but you're just so fearful of starting your business because you have failed businesses in the past, or maybe your dad or your uncle had failed businesses in the past and you saw how hard it was for them and so you're thinking to yourself, well, I want to start this business, but what if it fails? What if I lose money and I spend time and energy and money to try to get this thing going and it still fails. Well, that failed business as equally as real as you starting this business and growing it to a million dollars a year and having all of the success and happiness and everything achievement that you wanted. Both of those are Equally as real where it fails and you become a multimillionaire that are equally as real in this moment. But what do we focus on? Usually the one that we don't want. And so both of the outcomes existed in my mind, but only one of them was taking over. And it was up to me to think about it and decide which one I wanted to feed last week. So I decided to reframe my focus. So instead of fueling the fear and thinking about all of the worst things that could happen, I started picturing everything I wanted to happen. And so for hours, whenever the baby was asleep and I was holding onto him, I would go onto YouTube and I would watch people flying planes that, you know, the plane that I fly is called a Cirrus SR22T. So I went onto YouTube and I typed in Sirus SR22T. Solo. First solo. I'm watching everybody do their first solo flights and their first cross country flights and what it looked like and how excited that they were and all of that. And then I was like, you know what, this is cool, but let's make it more fun. And so I was like, I'm going to watch Top Gun too. I watched Top Gun 2 and I was like, this is amazing. This is. And I started getting into, like, the feeling of, like, the pure joy of flying. And I came across a video of the Blue Angels, which, if you're not in America, you might know who the Blue Angels are. They are some of the most elite, like, elite, Elite, elite pilots in the world. And there's a video online of them visualizing together in a group. All of the guys are on the table and speaking out loud as if they're actually in the planes. They have their eyes closed and they're holding onto the throttle and they're holding onto the stick and then yoke. And they're, they're calling out their turn, they're calling out, you know, going up, going down, movement, all of that. And they do an entire visualization of them flying the plane. And I was like, these are some of the most elite people at what they do in the entire world. And they're visualizing what they want to happen before they go out. How few people do that in their life, visualize exactly the way that they want something to be executed before they go out and do it. So I was like, you know what? Screw it, I'm going to do that. So I started visualizing what it would look like to have a successful flight. I visualized going to this airport, which is called Temple airport dropping off my flight instructor going down, taxiing down, speaking on the radios. Temple traffic Cirrus SR22T taking off Runway 16. I'm going to be staying in the pattern for touching goes Temple traffic. So I'm talking to myself out loud. Then I visualize, okay, I'm going to get off, I'm going to get it to Runway one six. I'm going to hit the throttle, I'm going to hit the left rudders. I hit the throttle so that I can make sure I stay on the, stay in the Runway. Then as soon as we get to, okay, airspeed's alive. Okay, once we get to 77 knots, we're going to pull back and, and we're going to rotate and it's going to be off into the sky. And I visualized talking to myself the way it's going to go, the way it's going to be. And you know what happened? I went from thinking about the worst that could happen, crashing the plane. What if this happens to me to my fear shrinking. I'm watching all these people fly. My anxiety lost its grip over me. My excitement took over and I actually got excited to go flying this weekend. So this happens to me as much as happens to any other person. But the secret to stopping fear is not about trying to conquer fear. It's about choosing what you give your attention to. And what you give your attention to is 100% something that you control. We can't control what's going to happen in the future, but right now, in this moment, our attention and what we give our attention to is 100% in our control. And the reason why fear feels so real is because your brain doesn't know the difference between your imagination and reality. It reacts the same to both. And I remember the first time I heard this, I was like, that sounds kind of crazy, but I heard this about 20 years ago. And it gets more and more true. And all the studies keep coming out of the way that your brain and body react to your imagination being equal to the way that they react to something actually happening in your reality. And that's the reason why you can feel anxious about something that hasn't even happened yet. You can sit in this moment in the air conditioned house that you're in and you can feel massive amounts of flood and anxiety about something that hasn't even happened yet. Your brain and your body treats it as if it's actually a real time event, as if it's actually happening right now. So if you sit there and you Imagine failing at whatever it is that you're afraid of failing at you. Your body will respond in this moment as if you're already failing right now. If you're afraid of rejection and you picture being rejected, your body, your nervous system reacts as if it's happening right now in this moment. And this is why fear and anxiety can be so overwhelming for people. Your brain is literally running a worst case scenario simulation in and your body is reacting to it as if it's actually happening in this moment. Like just, I really want you to get this, like with every cell of your body, like every, all 40 trillion cells. The reason why it's so overwhelming for you is because your brain is creating the worst case scenario. And it's simulating it in your mind right now through usually unconscious visualization. And your body is reacting to that as if it's happening in this moment. But here's the game changer of all of it. You can use the exact same mechanism that's keeping you paralyzed. You can use the exact same mechanism in your favor. So instead of letting fear take over, you can train your brain to visualize the best case scenario instead. Exactly like I did when I went onto YouTube and I started watching videos. I started trying to brainwash myself into thinking about how much fun it would be and what is I need to do. And then I sat there and I visualized and I spoke out loud to myself as I was actually on the radios. I spoke out loud to myself as if I was actually flying the plane. Visualize the best case scenario instead. And so what you want to do is step one is you want to notice the fear that's coming up. The moment that you feel anxiety creeping in. Pause, stop for a second. You can feel it in your body, can't you? Pause, ask yourself, what am I imagining right now? And actually become aware. Because you're usually unconsciously imagining these things. It's your subconscious. Chances are you're playing a mental movie of things going terribly wrong. So you know if you're about to give a speech and you notice yourself getting anxious, you notice the feeling of anxiety. You usually don't notice the mental movie. And so the mental movie, you know you're about to give the speech, it might be the mental movie that's going on in your head is you see yourself freezing up, looking like an idiot, stumbling over your words, embarrassing yourself. You're about to take a big risk. You start to notice the fear of you picture failure. You picture humiliation. You picture regret. This is your fear story. This is what you're projecting yourself into the future and imagining. And right now, it's directing your emotions, it's telling you exactly how to fear. Excuse me, it's telling you exactly how to feel. And so that's the first step, is you got to become aware of it. So the second step that you want is you want to challenge that fear story. You have to take a step back and you have to ask yourself, is this the only possible outcome? Is the only possible outcome me completely screwing up that speech and looking like an idiot? Because here's the truth. It's not. It's just the only one that you're focusing on. And it's really important to know this because a lot of time it feels like it's the only outcome. And we will think it is the only outcome unless we reframe the future in some sort of way. And so that's what you're going to do in step number two, after you challenge it, is you're going to create the best case movie in your head. You're going to flip the script. So instead of sitting there and worrying and thinking about the worst case scenario, you're going to now start imagining the best case scenario. If you're going to imagine the worst that could happen, you need to also imagine the best that could happen. So you ask yourself, what's the most exciting thing that could happen? What's the most fun? What's the most rewarding thing that could happen? How would it feel if it went exactly the way I want it? And you close your eyes and you fully step into that version and you can see it, you can feel it, you can try to experience it as if it's actually happening right now. So going back to the first example, if you're about to give a speech, imagine being up there and what it feels like to be crushing it in the presentation. Imagine the audience nodding along, engaged, inspired, you standing up there and you feel confident, you feel strong, and you feel in flow. And the moment that you finish, all of the people start clapping and they appreciate everything that you said and what it feels like after you get off the stage and you just gave a great speech and now you're shifting your focus and you change your brain's response. So instead of feeling fear, you can actually start to feel excitement. Instead of feeling dread, you can actually feel like, oh, my God, there's some possibility we could have an amazing outcome. This could go way better than I think that it could. And you're gonna start to feel the feelings of it going Way better than you were originally imagining. And then step number four is to take action anyways. Even with this shift, your fear still might linger a little bit. It's not going to be as strong, but it might linger. And that's okay. You don't have to get rid of your fears in order to take action. You can take action in spite of your fears. You can feel your fears, you can dance with them, and you can just take action with them anyways. The goal isn't to eliminate fear completely, because you probably will never do that, but the goal is to make sure it doesn't make your decisions for you. You want to be the one that's making the decisions, not your fears. Fear only controls you if you let it. So the next step is to do it anyways. It's to get in the plane and to fly. It's to step on the stage and give the best presentation that you can. It's to have the conversation that you need to have. It's to ask that person out to feel the fear and to do it anyways. Because once you move through it, you realize something that's really powerful. Fear is just this paper tiger. It looks scary, but it has no real teeth. And so you need to understand that if you're feeling fear, if you're feeling anxiety, it's coming from your own mind and nowhere else. So you've got to take a step back, reframe it, and then focus on the outcome that you want versus the outcome that is the most scary to you. And if you do that, it'll make it a lot easier to work through your fears and anxieties. Hey, thanks for watching this video. YouTube really thinks that you should be watching this video right here. So go ahead and click this, and if you want to subscribe to my channel, make sure you click that right there.